Читать книгу The Amish Bride - Emma Miller - Страница 11

Chapter Three

They walked back to her lane just as twilight was falling over the farm fields. “Danki, Micah,” Ellen said. “The fishing was fun. I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”

Her first moments alone with him, when they’d left the house, had been awkward. But then they’d fallen back into the easy rhythm of their younger days with none of the clumsiness of the situation that she’d feared. Being so comfortable with Micah made her wonder if maybe they could be happy together. What if Micah was whom God had intended for her all along?

“You should take these,” he said, holding a string of three perch.

“You caught two of them. Don’t you want to take them home to fry for breakfast?”

He still held them out. “Three measly fish for the five of us? Not worth the trouble of cleaning and cooking them. No, you’d best take them.”

“Danki for the fish, too, then. Dat loves fried fish for breakfast.”

“You’re welcome. And you are going to think about walking out with me,” Micah reminded. “Right?” He stood there, fishing poles in hand, smiling at her and completely at ease.

“Jah, I will.” She smiled at him. “God give you a restful sleep.”

“And you, Ellen.” He used no courting endearments, but she liked the way he said her name, and she felt a warm glow inside as she savored it. She didn’t want to spoil the feeling and was afraid that he might linger, might want to sit with her on the porch or stay on after her parents had gone to bed. Instead, he bestowed a final grin and strode off whistling in the direction of his own home.

Ellen walked slowly up the driveway and through her father’s barnyard, inhaling deep of the scent of her mother’s climbing roses and the honeysuckle that grew wild along the edge of the hedgerow. She drank in the peace of the coming night. Crickets and frogs called their familiar sounds, and evening shadows draped over the barnyard, easing her feelings of indecision. How wonderful life is, she thought. You expect each day to be like the one before, but the wonder of God’s grace was that you never really knew from one hour to another what would come next.

A single propane lamp glowed through the kitchen window, but the house was quiet. Simeon, Neziah and the boys had left. The only sign of movement was a calico cat nursing kittens near the back door. But the light meant that her parents were still up. Her father was too fearful of fire to retire and leave a lamp burning. Ellen stepped inside, the string of fish dangling from her finger. “Mam?” she called softly. “Dat?”

“Out here.” Her father’s voice came from the front of the house.

Their home was small as Amish homes went, but comfortable. When her father and his neighbors had built it, he and her mother were already past the age when they expected to be blessed with children. A big kitchen, a pantry, a living room, bath and two bedrooms comprised the entire downstairs. Her room was upstairs in an oversize, cheerful chamber with two dormer windows and a casement window that opened wide to let in fresh breezes from the west. She also had a small bath all to herself, a privacy that few Amish girls had. Growing up, her girlfriends, most from large families, had admired the luxury, but she would have gladly traded the cheerful room with its yellow trim, clean white claw-foot tub, fixtures and tiny shuttered window for a bevy of noisy sisters crowded head to foot in her bedroom.

The double door near the staircase stood open, and her father called again to her from the front porch. “Come, join us. And bring another bowl for beans.”

Butter beans, Ellen thought. The family often sat on the porch in the evenings this time of year and shelled butter beans. She and her mother canned bushels of beans for winter. Quarts of the beans already stood in neat rows in the pantry beside those of squash, English peas, string beans, corn, tomatoes and pickles. She wrapped the fish in some parchment paper and put it in the propane-run refrigerator. They’d keep until morning when she or her father would clean them. She washed her hands, found a bowl and carried it out to the porch. Her parents sat side by side in wooden rocking chairs, baskets of lima bean hulls and bowls of shelled beans around them.

“Catch any fish?” her father asked.

“In the fridge. If you clean them, I’ll fry them up for our breakfast.” Ellen took the chair on the other side of him. Her chair. Her mother sat still, her chin resting on her chest; she was snoring lightly. Her mother often drifted off to sleep in the afternoon and early evening. She didn’t have the vigor that Ellen was used to, and she worried about her. “Has she been asleep long?”

“Just a little while. Company wore her out.” He dumped butter beans still in their shells into Ellen’s bowl. “Course, you know how she loves to have people come. And she adores children, even those rascals of Neziah’s. Nothing makes her happier than stuffing a child with food, unless it’s singing in church. Your mother always had the sweetest voice. It was what drew me to her when we were young.”

Ellen nodded and smiled. She knew what her father was up to. They were so close that she was familiar with all his tricks. He was deliberately being sentimental about her mother to keep Ellen from talking about what she’d sought him out for. He knew that she was unhappy with the ambush that had happened at supper, and he wanted to avoid the consequences. But she suspected that he’d be disappointed if she let him get away with it, so she went straight to the heart of the pudding.

“You shouldn’t have asked the Shetlers here for supper to talk about this courting business without talking to me first,” she admonished gently. “I can’t believe you didn’t wait to see whether I was in favor of this or not.”

“Ach...ach, I was afraid you’d be vexed with me. I told your mother you would.” He gestured with his hand. “But it is such a good solution to Simeon’s problem and ours. And how could I refuse him? He came to me at midday, told me what was on his mind and said that he’d already approached you with the idea and you were in favor. Then he invited himself and his sons to supper.” He shrugged as if to say, what could I do? “He’s a good neighbor and an old friend.”

“Friends or not, I’m your daughter, and who I will or won’t marry is a serious matter. If you knew I wouldn’t approve, you shouldn’t have done it,” she said, unwilling to surrender so easily to being manipulated.

She had the greatest respect for her father’s judgment, but he’d always fostered independence in her. Even at a young age, he’d treated her more as another adult in the home than as a child. Maybe it was because her mother had always been an uncomplicated and basic person, content to allow her husband and the elders of the church to make decisions for her, while his was a keener mind that sought in-depth conversation. Or perhaps it was because she’d been the only child and he doted on her.

In any case, the Bible said “Honor thy father and mother,” and she hoped she hadn’t taken advantage of his leniency. She’d taken care not to be forward in front of others, especially with the more conservative of the community. But here, in their own home, with none but him to hear, how could she do less than protest his high-handedness?

“What was I to say to Simeon?” he went on. ‘“Nay, old friend, you can’t come to share bread with us until I see if my daughter wants to marry either one of your boys?’” He found a withered lima bean and cast it to the brown-and-white rat terrier sitting at his feet. Gilly caught the bean in the air and chomped it joyfully.

“It was a shock to see Micah and Neziah all dressed in their best, here at the table.” Ellen glanced at her mother, but she snored on, her hands loose in her lap, her bowl of unshelled beans hardly started. “She was good tonight, don’t you think?” she said, waffling by talking of something easier. “Her morning started bad, so I worried...”

Her father’s face was lost in shadow now, but Ellen knew he was smiling. He had such fondness for her mother, his love seemingly growing stronger with his wife’s slow mental decline. “She perked up when I told her that the children were coming. Buzzed around the kitchen like she was forty. Her biscuits were light enough to float, don’t you think? And she was sharp as a needle at supper.” Her father continued to hull limas, his fingers moving unconsciously without pause. Fat beans dropped by ones, twos and threes into the wide basket in his lap.

“Jah,” Ellen agreed. “No lapses in memory.” And her mother’s biscuits had been good tonight. She’d not forgotten the rising or the salt as she did sometimes. And she hadn’t let them stay in the oven until the bottoms began to burn. Once, not long ago, Ellen had come in from the garden to find the kitchen full of smoke and her mother standing motionless in the center of the room, staring at the stove and coughing. Ellen had had to get the biscuits out of the oven and shoo her mother outside where she could breathe. It was those lapses in judgment that made Ellen apprehensive about her mother’s health.

“So, Dochter, did you enjoy yourself on your outing with young Micah?”

“I did have a good time,” she admitted. “But you know I would have put the Shetlers off if I’d had the choice. This isn’t something that I can decide in a few hours.”

“But you are open to being courted by Micah or his brother?” When she didn’t answer right away, her father pressed on. “You have to marry, Ellen. You know that, don’t you? What will you do when your mother and I go to our reward? We’re not young, either of us. You’re a healthy young woman. You need a family of your own. And it would fill our hearts with joy if you could give us a grandchild before we die.”

She swallowed. Her throat felt tight, as if an invisible hand was squeezing it. It was all perfectly logical, of course, but what about her heart? Her parents had married for love, and she had hoped for the same.

“I’m not asking you to marry either of Simeon’s boys,” he father went on. “I’m only asking that you give them a chance.”

Her gaze met his, but she still didn’t speak.

“Just...just a month. That’s all I ask of you. Give them a month.” He smiled the smile he knew she could never resist. “Is that too much for an old man to ask of his daughter?”

He said it so sweetly that she sighed and looked at the lima bean in her hand. “No, I suppose it’s not too much to ask, so I will walk out with them,” she said softly. “But I’ll tell you now—” she pointed with the empty hull at him “—I’ll only truly consider Micah, not Neziah.”

“Don’t be foolish. You cared for Neziah once. You came close to marrying him.”

She tightened her mouth. “That was a long time ago,” she said. “Marrying Neziah would have been a mistake. We were—are—too different. He isn’t the husband for me, and I’m certainly not the wife for him.” Memories she hadn’t stirred up in years came back to her, and she felt her heart trip. Things had been so complicated with Neziah, and she had been so young. “I’d feel trapped in a marriage with him.”

“Then you’re wise to refuse him.” He leaned closer to her. “But you are open to being courted by Micah?”

She nodded. “Jah. If you think I should do that, I will.”

“And you don’t think it’s being unfair to Neziah to allow him to believe you’re considering his suit?”

“Honestly, Dat, I think he went along with Simeon’s idea just to please his father. I bet he’s trying to figure out at this very moment how to get out of this.”

“Then we will put this all in God’s hands,” her father said. “He’s never failed to be there when we need Him. It pleases me that you are willing to walk out with the Shetler boys, and I will place my hopes and prayers on the best solution for all of us.”

She nodded, her heart suddenly lighter. “I’ll put my trust in Him,” she agreed. And for the first time in years, she allowed herself to think of a different life than she had thought hers would be...one that included a husband, a baby and new possibilities.

* * *

“I’m hungry,” Joel said in Deitsch as Neziah lifted him out of the bathtub and wrapped him in an oversize white towel.

“Jah, me, too,” Asa agreed in Deitsch. “I want milk and cookies. Can we have milk and cookies, Dat?”

“English,” Neziah reminded them. “Bath time is English. Remember? Soon Joel will go to school, and the other children will speak English. You wouldn’t want them to call him a woodenhead, would you?” Asa wriggled out of his grasp and retreated to the far end of the claw-footed porcelain tub. “Come back here, you pollywog.” He captured the escapee and stood him beside his brother. It always surprised him how close they were in size, even though Asa was nearly two years younger. Neziah wrapped his younger son in a clean blue towel and sat him on the closed toilet seat.

The bathroom was large and plain with a white tile floor, white fixtures and white walls and window shutters. Neziah wondered if his boys ever realized how lucky they were not to have to use an outhouse as he had for much of his childhood. He hadn’t minded the spiders and the occasional mouse or bat as much as he had the cold on winter nights. He smiled. This modern bathroom with its deep sink, corner shower and propane heater was a great improvement. The Amish elders might be slow to change, but they did make some concessions to the twenty-first century, and bathrooms, in his opinion, were at the top of the list.

“My tummy hurts,” Joel said in English, sticking out his lower lip. “I have hungry.”

“After the big dinner and all the pie you ate at the Beacheys?” Neziah chuckled. “I don’t think so. You’ll have to wait for breakfast.”

Joel’s face contorted into a full-blown pout, and Asa chimed in. “Me hungry, too.”

“Bed and prayers.” Neziah whisked off the towels and tugged cotton nightshirts over two bobbing heads. “Brush your teeth now, and maybe we’ll have time for a little Family Life before lights out.” Family Life was one of the few publications that came to the house, and Neziah made a practice of reading short stories or poems that he thought his sons might like at bedtime.

“But we’re hungry,” Joel whined, retreating to the Deitsch dialect. “My belly hurts a lot.”

“Then cookies and milk will only make it worse,” Neziah pronounced. He scooped up Asa and draped him laughing over his shoulder and took Joel’s hand. “Bed. Now.” Joel allowed himself to be tugged along reluctantly to the bedroom and the double bed the boys shared. Neziah deposited Asa between the sheets then reached down for Joel.

“Read,” Asa reminded. He pulled the sheet up to his chin and dug his stuffed dog out from under his pillow while Joel wormed his way over his brother and curled up on top of the light cotton blanket and sheet.

A breeze blew through the curtainless windows on the north side of the bedroom. Like the bathroom, this was a sparse chamber: the bed, a bookcase, a table and two chairs. There were no dressers. The boys’ clothing was all hung inside the single, small closet. Neziah pulled up a chair, lit the propane lamp and together they shared a short prayer. Then he took the latest copy of Family Life magazine from the table. He’d read to Joel and Asa every night since their mother had died. It was something she’d always done with the children, and although he wasn’t as much at ease with reading aloud as Betty had been, he felt it was the right thing to do.

Strangely, the practice, which he’d begun out of a sense of duty, had become the highlight of his day. No matter how tired he was, spending a few moments quietly with his sons brought him deep contentment. Asa, in particular, seemed to enjoy the poetry as much as Neziah did. It wasn’t something that Neziah would have willingly admitted to anyone, but he found the sounds of the rhyming words pleasing. Joel preferred the stories, the longer the better, but Neziah suspected that it was simply a way of delaying bedtime.

Tonight, Neziah chose a short and funny poem about a squirrel that stored up nuts for winter and when he had finished it he said, “Sleep well,” as he bent to rest a hand lightly on each small head. Joel’s hair was light and feathery; Asa’s thick and curly. “God keep you both,” he murmured.

“Dat?”

“Jah, Joel, what is it? No more about cookies tonight.”

“Nay, Dat. I was wondering. Is Ellen going to be our new mutter?”

Neziah was surprised by the question; he had wondered how much his sons had understood from the conversations he and Micah had had with their father and later at the Beacheys’ table. Apparently, they’d caught the gist of it. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. He made it a point never to be dishonest with his children, not even for their own good. “Maybe. Would you like that?”

“Grossdaddi said she might marry you,” Joel said, avoiding the question.

“Jah, and...and Uncle Micah, too,” Asa supplied.

Neziah chuckled. “A woman can only marry one man, and a man only one woman. Ellen might marry me or your uncle Micah, or she might not marry either of us.” Neziah slid the chair back under the table and retrieved a crayon from the floor. It was almost too dark to see, and he wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t stepped on it. “Good night, boys.”

“But will she?” Joel persisted.

He stopped in the doorway and turned back to his boys. “We’ll have to wait and see. If she marries your uncle Micah, she’ll be your aunt.”

Joel wrinkled his little nose. “Is that like a mutter?”

A lump rose in Neziah’s throat. Joel had been so small when his mother died, and Asa only an infant. Neither of them could remember what it was like to have a mother. Neziah felt a faint wave of guilt. Had he been selfish in waiting so long to remarry? His sons deserved a mother; everyone in Honeysuckle thought so. But would Ellen be right for them? For him?

“Ellen makes good pie,” Joel said.

Asa yawned. “I like pie.”

“Ellen does make good pie,” Neziah conceded. “Now, no more talking. Time for sleep.” Pretending not to hear the muted whispers behind him, Neziah made his way out of the boys’ room and down the stairs. He didn’t need a light. He knew the way by heart.

He continued on through the house, past the closed door to the parlor, where a thin crack of light told him that his father was still awake reading the Bible or working on correspondence as part of his duties as a church elder. He walked through the kitchen and outside, making his way to the old brick well that stood near the back porch. The windmill and a series of gears, pipes and a holding tank delivered water to the house and bathroom, but the coldest water came from the deep well. Neziah unlatched the hook and slid aside the wooden cover. With some effort, an overhead pulley, a rope and a wooden bucket rewarded him with an icy drink of water scooped out with an aluminum cup that was fastened to the iron frame.

Neziah leaned against the old brick and savored the water. This was another habit of his. Every night, if it wasn’t raining, sleeting or snowing, he’d come out to the well and draw up fresh water. He liked the sensation of the liquid, the rough texture of the bricks and the familiar curves of the bucket and cup. He’d always loved the well. It was a good place to think.

He was still standing there, one hand steadying the bucket, when he heard the rhythmic sound of a stone skipping across water. Instantly, he knew what it was. He finished his water, hung the cup back on the hook and walked across the yard, past the grapevines. At the edge of the small pond in the side yard, he spotted the outline of a figure. The figure tossed something just so and again Neziah heard the familiar splash, splash, splash of a rock skipping across water.

“Only three. Can’t you do better than that?” he called, walking toward his brother.

“It’s not about how many hops. I’m practicing my technique,” Micah explained.

“Ah.” By the light of the rising moon, Neziah picked up a stone from the water’s edge and slid it back and forth over his fingertips, judging its shape and weight. A good rock had to be flat and oval and just the right weight. “Your spin’s still not right.”

“My spin is fine.” Micah picked up another rock, crouched and threw it.

Four skips.

“You should try standing up to start...like this.” Neziah lifted his hand above his head, his wrist cocked, and then swung down and out in one smooth movement. The stone hit the water and skipped one, two, three, four, five times before disappearing beneath the surface.

“Okay, that was just practice. Best two out of three tries,” Micah challenged, picking up another rock.

Neziah smiled. The two of them had been competitive for as long as he could remember, mostly because of Micah, he liked to think. To Micah, everything was a game. But the truth be told, though, Neziah had a small competitive streak himself. Or maybe it just bugged him that his little brother was so good at everything. Nothing ever came hard to Micah.

“Best score of three,” Neziah agreed. He leaned over to find three perfect rocks. “How was fishing with Ellen?”

“Great.”

Neziah could just make out Micah’s face; he was grinning ear to ear. “And Ellen really is agreeable to marrying one of us?”

Neziah saw Micah shrug in the darkness as he picked up a stone, ran his fingers over it and rejected it. “It makes sense, and she’s a sensible woman. Or haven’t you noticed that?”

“You’re not usually so quick to seize on one of Vadder’s ideas.” Finding a near-perfect stone, Neziah passed it to his left hand for safekeeping.

“He’s right. It’s past time I married. I look at you with your two boys and...” Micah turned to Neziah, casually tossing a stone into the air and catching it. “You know what I think of them. Scamps or not, it’s time I had a few of my own. And for that I need a wife. Why not Ellen?”

“She’s older than you.”

Micah laughed. “That’s what she said. Wasn’t our mutter older than our vadder?”

“A year, I think, but there’s more than that between you and Ellen.”

“If it doesn’t bother me, it shouldn’t bother you, brother.” Micah stared at Neziah for a moment. The grin came again. “Not having second thoughts, are you? Wishing you hadn’t called things off when you did?”

“Of course not,” Neziah said a little too quickly. “We walked out together, that’s true, but there were differences that we couldn’t seem to...” He sighed and stood at the edge of the water. “Your turn.”

Micah squatted down. “If my courting Ellen is a problem for you, now’s the time to speak up. I like her, but I won’t let a woman come between us. Not even Ellen.” He let go of his first stone. “Yes!” he cheered when it hopped five times.

“Dat’s idea is that she choose between us. I agreed to it, same as you.” Neziah tossed his stone and it skipped five times. “I just don’t want you to hurt her, Micah. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Micah tossed his next stone. Three skips. He didn’t cheer. “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind to step aside.”

Neziah skipped his second stone. Five again. “I didn’t say that.” He didn’t like it when people put words in his mouth.

Micah prepared to toss his final stone, taking his time to glance at the water and get himself into position. “So you do still have feelings for her?” He let the stone fly...five skips.

Neziah thought about it for a minute and realized that as much as he would like to deny it, he couldn’t. He raised his hand high over his head, the rock just right between his fingers. “We didn’t break up because we didn’t care for each other. It was because we weren’t sure that we were suited to be the best partners. Marriage is for life, and some differences can loom large as years pass.” He let the rock go, spinning it just right...six skips. “I win,” he declared.

Micah turned to Neziah, his tone teasing. “So what you’re saying, brother, is that you’re in?”

“I’m in,” Neziah admitted.

“And no hard feelings if she picks me?” Micah opened his arms wide. “Because you know I’m hard for the girls to resist.”

“Why would there be any hard feelings?” Neziah asked and then glanced away. He loved his brother, always had, but he wondered, as the words came out of his mouth, how he would feel seeing Ellen marry him. “It’s her choice.”

“Goot. Contest on. And may the best Shetler bring home the bride!” Micah snatched up another stone. “Now come on. One more time. Best out of five stones.”